Sunday, February 3, 2013

κρίσις - In a Crisis

When one reaches a certain age, that in between age
when one is not young but not old, a crisis usually ensues. From the Greek
word, κρίσις, it is a moment when a decision must be taken, and an old system
must be immediately replaced with a new one. I believe that for some people,
there are small moments of crisis that fade in and out of our lives, but they
are universally experienced by all.

In that crisis, one must decide which path they are
going to take in life: the superficial path or the meaningful path. On our time
line, the crises are scattered, small specks. In that speck lives a moment of
lucidity, when one looks at the world to ask: “everything will break down, all beauty fades, nothing lasts forever,
and do we really own anything in this world?” Those thoughts have been
washed, rinsed, bleached, and hung out to dry in my mind more times than I can
count. For many people these moments are grand, defining moments in their
lives. For me, they are just little footprints I leave in the sand; waiting for
the ocean will wash them away forever.

Existential dilemmas such as these are natural
events that occur among most people. If a person has not had a few of them in
their life, then there is something wrong. They happened to me a lot
when I was in my early teens. For the most part, they came and went throughout
my early adulthood.

The question is, how do we deal with it, when these
defining moments rear their ugly heads? It is a speck of time when one’s
true colors are revealed, it is a defining moment and it is important. It is a moment one must act properly, because how we handle a crisis is how we will be remembered.

Lazy Thinker: a person can be lazy and decide that
some supernatural deity loves them, is their best friend, and has answers to
things they are not supposed to know. I would say that kind of thinking is a
mixture of lazy and coward.

Critical Thinker: life is meaningless unless I prescribe
meaning to it. What kind of meaning do I want to give the temporal world? Let’s
think on it some more….

Existential crisis happen to 90 percent of thinking
adults. Unfortunately, only a small number of those use the opportunity wisely.
Many people consider existential philosophy is abstract and irrelevant to
modernity. Philosophical jargon, like any kind of jargon, lead people feel like
they do not belong to ‘that’ world. I am here to say that even if you do not get
the jargon, that is okay because as a human being, you still experience the
same existential dilemmas that every other human animal faces. We all belong in
existentialism and to existentialism: knowing the jargon is not necessary.

We live in a world where people are consumed with
appearances. They want to create the appearance of wealth and success, at any
cost. Coins in casinos clink, neon lights flash, and women put on red lipstick.
We have music, light shows, cars, clothes, commercials, it never ends. IPhones,
I pads, televisions, computers, games, it never stops. The consumption just keeps
growing to the point where individuals are defined entirely by the outside
world, and the impression they leave upon others. We live in a world of
smokescreens, mirrors, and mindless materialism. The challenge is being able to
live authentically, and not get sucked into anything. The things that suck
people in are infinite: clothing, cars, technology, love, sex, beauty,
religion, and politics just to name a few. It is like we are at the bottom of a swimming
pool, looking up at the world through the thin pane of water separating the
water from the world where we belong.

According to existential philosophy, a lack of
authenticity is nothing short of fraud. What is most difficult is that human
nature drives us to conform like a herd of trusting, blind, sheep being led to
the slaughter.

I am going to leave with this thought, and revisit
it at another time. How did we get into this mess? And how, can we start caring
more about each other instead of accumulating piles of materialistic crap?

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